


(you) take this burden away from me

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Geralt of Rivia and Yennefer of Vengerberg are Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon's Parents, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Pre-Slash, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trans Jaskier | Dandelion, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, sticking it to bigoted parents, that turns into Actual Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23947027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: The first time it happens, it almost doesn’t register.It’s a slip of the tongue, he tells himself,it’s one letter difference and she didn’t mean it. She knows what my name is, it’s just difficult to change a lifetime of habit, right?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 483





	1. Family Isn't Blood, It's Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TerresDeBrume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/gifts).



> Based on [this](https://terresdebrume.tumblr.com/post/616871813439520768) Tumblr post:
> 
>  _Whatever you do, don’t think about modern AU Jaskier on the phone with his mom and they’re having an okay conversation, she isn’t being actively hateful or anything, then Jaskier hears his dad ask, “Who are you talking to?” and his mom answers, “It’s Julia” and his dad says “Oh, tell her I said hello.”_  
>  Don’t imagine how he doesn’t correct her because what’s the point, how many times can he tell her he goes by Jaskier now, how many times does he has to feel his heart break in his heavy, heavy chest.

The first time it happens, it almost doesn’t register. _It’s a slip of the tongue_ , he tells himself, _it’s one letter difference and she didn’t mean it. She knows what my name is, it’s just difficult to change a lifetime of habit, right?_ He catches Shani’s eye over the top of his laptop where they’re sat in their university dorm common room, both working on papers - Shani’s about the theory of, and commentary on, homeopathic and herbal medicines, and his on the great European composers of the Baroque period - and she rolls her eyes at him. Shani has little time for his parents at all, ever since she met them briefly whilst they were helping him move his stuff into his room and his mother commented on what a ‘masculine face that red-headed lesbian has’ and Jaskier, for once in his life speechless, could only stammer that Shani was _straight_ , Mummy.

(He got the absolute piss ripped out of him for still calling his mother ‘Mummy’. But it’s a force of habit, much like her attitude towards him and everyone else for whom her use of the word ‘queer’ is still a pejorative, a relic of the upper-class upbringing he’s had. He still puts in the effort to change it, because. Well. They might have a point.)

‘So as I was saying, we hope your studies are going well - Daddy was so proud to see you’d achieved a First on that Beethoven essay! Sheila and David at the country club were plum green with envy, _their_ daughter’s only at Durham, not Cambridge, and she’s only managing a two-one-’

Jaskier’s father speaks up, cutting her off mid-flow. He doesn’t even need to see him to know what Alfred Pankratz will be doing: sitting in his wingbacked armchair by the fire, _Financial Times_ open on his knee, half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and a glass of cognac on the accent table at his right hand. ‘Who are you talking to, Lucia?’

‘It’s Julia,’ his mother says, and it takes a moment to hit him, in the meantime of which his father responds, ‘Oh. Tell her I said hello.’

‘Mother,’ he interrupts, shaking his head like a dog trying to tip water out of its ears, needing to check that he had, in fact, heard her correctly. ‘Mum, what did you call me?’

‘Your name, darling. You’re not still going on with this silly _Jaskier_ business, are you? It sounds so - _common_ , and foreign to boot-’

‘Mum, Jaskier _is_ my name. We’ve been over this. I sent you the deed poll.’

‘Is that what that was? A sheet of paper just printed out off the internet? That’s not a real deed poll, darling. Anyway, whatever it was, I think Daddy misplaced it amongst the papers that went in the shredder the other day - you know how absent-minded he is about these things-’

Jaskier sighs, heavy as Shakespeare’s head that wears the crown. ‘Mum, that cost me thirty pounds. Plus usage of the library’s printers for the ink and the paper. It was a real deed poll.’

‘Well, never mind, darling. It’s for the best. You’ll always be Julia to us.’

‘...Right,’ he says dully, his voice thick. Shani’s green eyes flicker up to meet his, her face endlessly sympathetic. ‘Right. Thanks, Mum. Talk to you later.’

‘Are you going already, darling? You haven’t told us about what you’ve been up to this week -’

‘I’ve - I’m busy, Mum, I’ve got a thousand and one essays to write, I have to study. I’ll talk to you later.’

‘Well, alright then, darling. Bye-bye. Alfred, say goodbye to Julia-’

He hangs up before he has to hear it again. Hangs up, grits his teeth, and tells himself that throwing his phone across the room will only make him more miserable in the long run, because he won’t be able to answer those texts from the cute brunette he picked up at the student bar last weekend and the attractive second-year in his group for their Experimental Music presentation who definitely wants into his pants, or hear from Geralt.

And that, well. That was the really important thing. _Geralt_.

Where does he start?

Geralt is not a student at the university with him. He’s not an anything, as far as Jaskier can tell, other than a large, scary, inexplicably white-haired man of indiscriminate age who wears nothing but leather all day no matter the weather and rides a huge red Harley Davidson he has, equally inexplicably, _named_. Jaskier sees him, every so often, at the bar in town, the most run-down shabby hole-in-the-wall Cambridge can muster, with moth-eaten taxidermy on the walls, a fireplace choked with soot, and glasses always missing a chip or two from the rims. He manages to look out of place even there, and he fascinates Jaskier more than he has any right to.

Jaskier wants nothing more at this moment than to see him, so he shuts his laptop and slings it in his backpack, making a speedy excuse to Shani - who just nods, more than used to this by now - and exits the dorm to head for Gwydir Street. It’s cool outside, it being late and the middle of March, the wind sharp on his cheeks and buffing them pink with cold, and he pulls his cap down over his ears and hunches into the neck of his coat. Not for the first time, he wishes he’d brought a decent, functional coat instead the silver puffa jacket that Yennefer, one of his and Geralt’s mutual - well, if not friends then acquaintances, maybe - had said (with a raised eyebrow) made him look like a turkey at Christmas, trussed up with tinfoil ready to go in the oven. But the tinfoil jacket matches his sparkly Doc Martens, so at least there’s that.

Once he arrives, he shrugs out of the ridiculous jacket - feeling painfully overdressed in that dingy, dark pub where he’s regarded with the narrowed, suspicious expression befitting a peacock strutting into the mangy street pigeons’ neighbourhood - and saunters over to the corner, where he can see Geralt sat, alone as ever, at a table with a pint of beer in front of him, staring off into the distance.

Jaskier slips into the booth beside him, and Geralt’s yellow eyes slide slowly towards him with an audible exhale. It sounds like something somewhere between exasperation and fondness, or at least, that’s how Jaskier is interpreting it.

‘Jaskier,’ is all Geralt says in greeting, in his rough, gruff voice, and Jaskier grins at him.

‘Hello. Thought I’d drop in and grace you with my presence, not to mention my scintillating conversation. In all honesty, I was getting terribly bored at university researching the Baroque composers - as though we didn’t do them to death last quarter, if I have to read the name Scarlatti one more time, I’ll brain myself with my own lute-’

Geralt raises one eyebrow wordlessly, and - as ever - Jaskier’s words dry up in his throat. Geralt has the uncomfortable ability, much like Jaskier’s parents, to make him feel like an unnecessary imposition in any and all situations. Jaskier understands, of course. Geralt is the most painfully introverted person he’s ever met, who won’t say two words when none will do, and who radiates _fuck off_ vibes like Yennefer wears her cloud of perfume. Sometimes he’s grateful for that, of course; Geralt makes an excellent sounding board to bounce ideas off, purely because he just sits there like a statue listening to Jaskier’s prattling. But other times, like tonight, he gets the distinct impression that Geralt only tolerates him, that he finds Jaskier to be an annoyance in his life, and that comes a little too close to home.

His words peter out, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Do you - do you want me to go?’ he asks hesitantly, the note of pleading in his voice making him feel sick. _Please don’t tell me to go_ , it says, and he hates himself a little.

Geralt hums.

Jaskier sighs heavily and stands up, getting his backpack and throwing it over one shoulder, preparing to leave, until one large, pale hand shoots out and grasps his forearm, Geralt’s golden eyes on his.

‘I didn’t say go,’ he grates out, and Jaskier gives him a weak smile.

‘You didn’t say stay, either.’

Geralt nods, acknowledging the statement, but still pulls, gentle but insistent, on Jaskier’s arm, dragging him down to sit. Jaskier gratefully takes his seat again, sighing, and Geralt’s face - it doesn’t soften, per se, but it does _something_. Encourages, a little. And he really needs to get this, amongst other things, off his chest.

‘My mother phoned,’ he tells the table, and Geralt hums again. His eyes are still fixed on Jaskier’s face, the same amber shade as Jaskier’s cat Buttercup’s at home in Chelsea, and Jaskier shrugs. ‘She… Well. It’s never a particularly pleasant experience, mostly because I know they both wish I’d gone to Oxford, like them, and taken law and politics like my father to take up his mantle in the House of Lords instead of ‘wasting my life’ studying music at Cambridge, which might as well be Hull Polytechnic to them, not that anyone calls Uni of Hull the Polytechnic anymore because it stopped being that in the 80s, I think, but the main issue is that they called and they called me. Well.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘They called me - something I don’t like being called, and, um, it really bothers me.’

Geralt hums, taking a sip of his beer, and tilts his head. His hair is a waterfall of silver over his broad shoulders, and Jaskier really, really wants to run his fingers through it, to see if it’s as silky and smooth as it looks or wiry like spun metal, but he doesn’t. He just keeps looking at the table, eyes tracing the knots in the wood and bitten thumbnail scraping a sticky beer spill off the polished top, until Geralt speaks.

‘I take it you’ve told them to stop.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ Jaskier says miserably. ‘They’re - well. They’re an Earl and a Countess, you know, and their set, they’re expected to be a certain way and that expectation goes double for their children. And, um. I’m their only child. I wasn’t what they wanted and I’m even less so now, but I want to live up to it if I can. I want to please them.’

Geralt makes a thoughtful grunting noise this time, taking another deep draught of his beer. ‘But what they want and what you want are at odds.’

‘Well, yes. Technically speaking.’

‘And you’re going to spend your entire life doing what they want, when you’ve already admitted it’s impossible.’ Geralt raises his eyebrow. ‘I knew you could be stupid, Jaskier, but I didn’t take you for a masochist.’

Jaskier splutters for a moment, hurt, and shoves his middle finger in his mouth to gnaw at the nail. ‘Like I said, it’s not that easy.’

‘Enlighten me,’ Geralt murmurs, and his tone is actually gentler this time. His face, never soft, is at least - kind. Less stoic than normal, and it sets Jaskier’s stomach filling with the fluttering of butterflies and his heart juddering in his ribs, missing not just one beat but several. He swallows past the sudden lump in his throat.

‘I’m… My father wanted a boy, a Viscount to pass his titles and lands and peerages on to. My mother had the gall to have me instead, and so that dream was rather - shot down in flames. And then, not only was I, well. I turned out to be queer as well, which is equally bad if not worse. As far as they’re concerned, when I’m being who _I_ want to be, I’m the biggest embarrassment to them humanly possible, so it’s better that I just. Act, I suppose. ‘The Oscar goes to’, et cetera. And the phone call today was a thinly-veiled reminder that that’s their expectation for me.’

Geralt’s brows are knitted, an expression of confusion on his face.

‘They wanted a boy?’

Jaskier winces - he can’t help it - and can’t meet Geralt’s eyes when he mumbles, ‘Yes.’

Geralt raises his eyebrow, making a sweeping gesture at Jaskier’s entire body, and something bursts in his chest. He feels flooded, not with pain, but with light; buoyant enough to float to the ceiling. He didn’t know that he’d needed Geralt to acknowledge him like that, but it means more coming from Geralt than from anyone else. The idea that Geralt gets it when his parents don’t - Jaskier doesn’t have words. It seems to be a common occurrence around Geralt of Rivia.

He laughs a little awkwardly, cheeks pink with pleasure. ‘Thanks, Geralt. But I don’t - I don’t count.’

‘You’re a boy,’ Geralt says bluntly. ‘They don’t want you to be a boy, they didn’t want you to be a girl. Sounds like a them problem, not a you problem.’

Jaskier’s eyes are welling up, and he bites his lower lip. He snorts out another wet laugh. ‘Them problems _are_ me problems.’

Geralt shrugs. ‘Don’t have to be.’

Jaskier snorts, rolling his eyes. ‘Oh? And how does the omniscient Geralt suggest I resolve that then?’

Geralt leans in, his eyes fixed on Jaskier’s face. Buttercup yellow, like gold; Jaskier’s never seen eyes like them. They’re soft, warm, safe; like Geralt’s voice in his ears, never raised to him in anger. Geralt’s as far away from Jaskier’s parents as it’s humanly possible to get, and he can’t believe he’d ever thought of them as similar. Jaskier’s parents disregard him out of embarrassment. Geralt - Geralt didn’t disregard him. He listens when it’s important, he listens and softens and cares, and Jaskier maybe loves him a little bit for it.

Maybe more than a little bit.

‘Family isn’t blood, it’s choice,’ he says firmly. Jaskier snorts. 

‘Right.’

Geralt growls, his eyes narrowing slightly, and Jaskier clams up. ‘I’m serious. The only family I’ve known are Vesemir and the boys I grew up with. Eskel and Lambert. And then Yenn, and Ciri.’ He reaches across the table, his hand cupping Jaskier’s chin and forcing him to look at him. ‘I don’t have a single blood tie to any of those people, but I’d kill for them. They’re my family. And I chose that.’

It’s the most words Jaskier’s ever heard come out of Geralt’s mouth at once, maybe ever, and they tie his tongue and his guts in knots until he can’t breathe. Jaskier nods, swallowing, and Geralt settles back in his seat, taking a gulp of his beer.

‘All the same, if you want my help, you only have to ask.’

‘Help? How?’

Geralt’s face splits into a grin, sharp-toothed and mischievous.


	2. Not Pretending Now

When Geralt turns up in not just a suit, but a tuxedo, Jaskier about swallows his tongue. Jaskier himself is dressed in a deep purple velvet blazer and dark trousers with a white shirt, already pushing the envelope on what his parents will let him get away with. Geralt turning up in a leather jacket unzipped over a perfectly-fitted black tuxedo, with a _leather_ bow tie - which should look absurd, instead of absurdly hot, and has someone turned up the central heating because Jaskier feels like he’s on fire - is more than he can handle. Geralt’s hair is slicked back, top half neatly braided and the rest loose on his shoulders, and he grins at the open-mouthed admiration on Jaskier’s face, holding out one arm in a parody of upper-class manners.

Jaskier is forcibly reminded of the scene from _Titanic_ where Jack is dressed in white tie for dinner with Rose; he feels more than a little like Kate Winslet as he obediently takes Geralt’s arm and is led down the stairs of his dorm to Geralt’s Harley, propped up on its stand, outside.

Geralt hands him a helmet. ‘Climb on.’

Wearing his best black tie, on a motorbike, to a posh dinner with his parents? Arms wrapped around Geralt’s waist and Jaskier snuggled up against his back so he doesn’t fall off? Geralt is trying to kill him.

Those bright amber eyes are amused as Jaskier swallows heavily, taking the helmet from him and obediently climbing onto the back of the bike. Geralt slots his own helmet over his head, zips his leather jacket up, and kicks Roach into life. The motorbike purrs underneath them, Geralt opens the throttle, and they pull out of the parking lot towards the stately home where Jaskier’s parents are holding this ridiculous dinner for him.

The journey is, blessedly, short, because Geralt’s back is wonderfully warm and musclebound under Jaskier’s chest, and he finds it so distracting he nearly wants to let go to touch, if it wouldn’t make him fly backwards off the bike at fifty miles an hour. Occasionally, when he fidgets with the placket of Geralt’s jacket when they’re stopped at a red light for roadworks, he swears he can hear Geralt chuckling to himself inside his helmet, but he must be imagining things. Eventually they pull up, however, and Geralt climbs off the bike to help Jaskier down, pulling his helmet off. There’s a few silver flyaways now, the neat braid loosened and mussed by the helmet being shoved on and removed, and if anything, it only looks sexier. Like bed hair - _sex_ hair - and Jaskier is burning alive, he _must_ be, because he’s so hot he swears there’s steam rising from under his collar.

Geralt unzips his leathers, stows them and the helmets in the bike’s storage box, and leads the way inside. Jaskier stumbles after him, a little dazed.

His mother and father are waiting for him in the foyer, clad in their very best evening wear. Alfred Pankratz is in white tie, perfectly pressed and creases sharp enough to cut, his face stony as they approach. Jaskier’s mother goes to embrace him before taking in the suit, and her face falls.

‘Julia, darling, what on earth are you doing in a suit? It’s white tie - where’s the dress I packed for you?’ She twitters over him, growing more and more distressed, whilst his father stares down Geralt in his visible leather and disregard for proper dress, his lip curling with distaste. Alfred lays a hand on his wife’s arm, holding her back, before turning to his son.

‘Julia, who’s this? I don’t remember your rsvp including company.’

‘Mum, Dad, this is-’ He swallows. ‘This is Geralt. Of Rivia.’

‘Of Rivia? _What_ of Rivia? Count? Viscount? Baron?’

‘No,’ Geralt says, in his most painfully polite _fuck you_ tone, and Jaskier’s heart skids and stutters in his chest, ‘just of Rivia.’

Alfred’s lip curls further, his eyes cold. ‘I see. Geralt, could you perhaps excuse us for a moment? Julia, Lucia and I need to have a quiet word.’

Geralt turns to Jaskier, waiting for his say-so, and at his jerky nod, acquiesces with his own gracious bow. Who would have guessed that the leather-clad biker would know how to move in the same social circles as Jaskier’s parents? Jaskier feels faint, and worse when his father grips his arm - too tightly - and all but drags him aside, eyes narrowed and furious.

‘Julia, what are you playing at?’ He hisses, whilst casting firm nods of acknowledgement and tight, false smiles at other passing lords and peers in white-tie dress, their wives in tow. Jaskier tries to pull his arm away, but Alfred is having none of it.

‘Dad, I’m here for the dinner.’

‘I _meant,_ what are you playing at embarrassing us like this? First of all you’ve turned up in a suit, poorly-fitting and the wrong colour and a fucking _suit_ -’

‘Alfred!’

‘Quiet, Lucia - she’s humiliating us! Our _daughter_ has turned up at her own fucking dinner throwing all of this back in our faces, playing at being a man in her suit and with that hideous fucking _Rivian_ in his leather? What are you playing at, Julia? _Answer me_!’

Jaskier, his face white, stammers and splutters helplessly, until Geralt, like his white knight in shining tuxedo, steps in between them, his face cold and carefully walking the line between protective and intimidating. 

‘I’m Jaskier’s boyfriend,’ he says firmly, and Jaskier’s stomach lurches. He stares at the back of Geralt’s head, speechless, as Alfred and Lucia stare at them both, shock written all over their faces. Jaskier is the first to recover, hesitantly slipping his hand into Geralt’s and drawing strength from the way he squeezes, warm and supportive, around it before Jaskier speaks up.

‘Yes. My boyfriend. He’s my boyfriend, Dad, and I wanted to introduce the three of you to one another at some point so figured, um, what better time than at the dinner-’

‘No,’ Alfred snaps, furious. ‘He’s not. This - _ruffian_ \- is not your boyfriend, and, _Geralt of Rivia_ , if you don’t let go of my daughter in the next ten seconds I shall have you thrown out.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Geralt says smoothly, staring Jaskier’s father down. ‘I can’t let go of something I don’t have hold of. The person whose hand I am holding is your son, and I think, as his boyfriend, I have every right to hold his hand if he wants me to. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary yet.’

Jaskier can’t breathe. He actually can’t breathe. His heart is pounding, his ribs ache as though there’s iron bars around his chest squeezing all the air out of his lungs, and his vision is tunnelling to nothing, a roaring in his ears. The only point anchoring him to reality is Geralt’s hand in his, the rough, callused skin warm against the palm of his hand, and he clutches all the tighter as the ringing in his ears gets worse, louder, deafening-

He comes to outside, Geralt’s jacket over his shoulders and his back leant against Geralt’s broad chest. He’s shaking, probably from the cold but also, possibly, from gratitude. It’s probably a good thing he’s already sat down because he feels so weak he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand.

‘Alright?’ Geralt asks quietly, his lips brushing Jaskier’s ear, they’re so close together, and Jaskier shivers.

‘I will be in a moment. Sorry. I - I wish you hadn’t seen that.’

‘What? The panic attack?’ Geralt snorts. ‘I’ve dealt with worse.’

‘I meant all of it. My parents, the panic attack… everything. You shouldn’t have had to deal with any of it. My dad was - my dad was so rude. He doesn’t hate all Rivians, I promise, it’s just - I provoked him.’

‘How? By being yourself?’ Geralt rolls his eyes. ‘That’s bullshit, Jaskier.’

‘They’re my parents.’ He sighs, tears welling up. He hates himself for crying over them, over nothing more than being proved right for the hundredth, the thousandth time that he was embarrassing to them. Over Geralt having seen him so weak in front of them. ‘They love me.’

‘No,’ Geralt says, sharp and angry, and Jaskier flinches. ‘That’s not - parents who love their children don’t insult them like that. I’m not an expert - I don’t have parents, as I told you - but I have a daughter. And no matter what Ciri did, or said, how she grew up and how she wanted to express herself, neither Yenn nor I would react like that.’ He’s breathing hard, angry, and Jaskier is amazed that it’s because of him. On his behalf.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just stays silent, craning his neck to look at Geralt over his shoulder. Geralt’s eyes are on his, flashing in the low light, and he breathes a heavy sigh. Jaskier’s eyes drop to his mouth, he can’t help it, and Geralt catches him looking.

‘Jaskier…’ he says slowly, and Jaskier flinches, pulling away.

‘I’m sorry. I know you were just - pretending. To protect me. I just…’

‘Jaskier,’ Geralt hums, his hand reaching down, around Jaskier’s waist, to tangle their fingers together against his stomach. So gentle, gentler than anyone so huge and rough has any right to be, except Geralt’s heart is even bigger than his hands, made of the same gold as his eyes, and gods help Jaskier, he loves him so much he physically aches with it.

‘What?’ he breathes, gaze flickering back up to Geralt’s.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Geralt asks, his voice husky and rough and like music, the sweetest music, to Jaskier’s ears.

‘Jesus Christ, Geralt, kiss me,’ he pleads, breathless. Geralt’s mouth curls up into a smile, a flash of those sharp, white teeth in the green light of the emergency exit sign above them, his hair a messy tumble around their faces, and grants Jaskier his wish.

His lips are soft on Jaskier’s, insistent as they press together, his tongue asking for more as it begs entrance. Jaskier acquiesces happily, Geralt’s hand pulling sharply in his hair and his stubbled jaw buffing Jaskier’s chin raw, but for all these discomforts, the kiss is perfect. More perfect than he believes any kiss could be, and when it’s over, he chases Geralt’s mouth for one more. And more, and more, until he’s lost count and they’re both red-cheeked and breathless.

‘You’re not pretending now, right?’ he pants, and Geralt huffs a laugh.

‘Not now, Jaskier.’

‘Excellent,’ he mumbles, pulling Geralt down for more, and is rewarded with the curve of a smile against his lips and strong arms around his waist, holding him close.

**Author's Note:**

> [visual](https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/20/590x/secondary/Johnny-and-Adam-Goodman-2386605.jpg?r=1585334190086) for Jaskier's silver coat.
> 
> I decided Jaskier's parents are Alfred and Lucia Pankratz, Earl and Countess of Lettenhove.


End file.
